"An Excursion into the Fifth Century"

"An Excursion into the Fifth Century"

Lough Derg--Pilgrimage--Irish Identity--Alice Curtayne

The opening paragraph's of Alice Curtayne's 1932 pamphlet about Lough Derg

Alice Curtayne, 1898-1981

Curtayne, Alice, Saint Patrick's purgatory: The Sanctuary of Station Island, Lough Derg, or An Excursion into the Fifth Century

Anthonian Press, Dublin

1932

Citation for the purposes of criticism

Physical description: 31 p. ; 17 cm

English

Pamphlet

DD_0285

54.6083, -7.8714

National Library, Ir 2820941 p 128

"SAINT PATRICK’S PURGATORY

THE SANCTUARY OF STATION ISLAND, LOUGH DERG

OR

AN EXCURSION INTO THE FIFTH CENTURY

Station Island, In Lough Derg, County Donegal, the goal of Ireland’s national pilgrimage, is a mere craggy knoll less than an acre in extent, set in a grey quiet lake, enfolded by a chain of low rolling mountains, barren, grey too, quiet as the lake they shield.

There abide here three qualities of life, so rare as almost to have vanished from our world: antiquity, simplicity and quietude – characters conditioning all permanence and sweetness. They allure and assuage the mind. They lend this pilgrimage its special prestige.

Fully as ancient as our Irish Catholic Life, the Lough Derg devotion is a door opening from the twentieth century into the fifth: at once a voyage of discovery and an avenue of escape. On this Island the past endures; fifteen hundred years are as though they had never been. Every pilgrim disembarking here becomes a sort of Rip Van Winkle and returns enriched with experimental knowledge of Celtic Christianity."

Pamphlet